Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on March 2014

A box office hit grossing over $100 million in the US, Lone Survivor has been hailed by critics as the best war film since Saving Private Ryan. It tells the harrowing story of a Navy SEAL who is part of a recon team sent into a remote region of Afghanistan that is ambushed by insurgents. After a fierce battle claims all of his comrades, he drags himself off the mountain. A villager takes great risks to hide him, saving him from beheading at the hands of the Taliban.

The tale would be nearly impossible to believe if it were not the true story of Marcus Luttrell, a Texas native who returned home and wrote a memoir that became a New York Times bestseller and the basis of the film. “The first thing you have got to know is that this is not my story,” he tells Metropolis during his first visit to Japan. With an imposing physical presence, but a sweet, down-home demeanor, Luttrell leans in to make his point. “That’s our story.”

He is referring to the three other members of the team who did not make it off the mountain alive, as well as eight other SEALs and eight Army commandos who died when rescue helicopters were shot down. He is quick to dispel doubts viewers may have about the onscreen characters carrying on after sustaining shrapnel, AK-47 fire and broken bones. “The special effects were based directly on the actual autopsy reports,” he says. “They kept fighting and simply succumbed to their injures.”

If anything, the film tones down their remarkable perseverance. Mark Wahlberg, who plays Luttrell in the film, is shown waking up in the Afghan wilderness before limping off to the nearest village. In reality, Luttrell was paralyzed from the chest down and crawled all night, drawing lines in the dirt with a rock to give himself new goals to reach. “I have always loved the challenge of playing regular guys who have had to go through extraordinary things,” Wahlberg said at a Los Angeles screening of the film. “Marcus is not ordinary. He is an extraordinary guy who survived the impossible.”

Wahlberg, who is known for beefing up for action roles, went through gruelling training in order to do justice to Luttrell’s story. The first 80 pages of Luttrell’s book are devoted to the rigors of SEAL training, which in the film are compressed into an opening credit sequence using actual Navy footage. “They call it the Hollywood class,” Luttrell says with a laugh. “They do a full day of training and after the cameras leave, they really put the smackdown on them.” Wahlberg had to replicate the training in a month, but had the best trainer possible—Luttrell himself.  “SEALs don’t really get starstuck,” Luttrell says. “I said ‘there is your gear and meet me in the range in five minutes. We were on them hard, in their face.”

Luttrell was on the set during filming to ensure the actors acted like SEALs but says he didn’t “want to step on anyone’s toes.” The town of Chilili, New Mexico was transformed into an Afghan village. “It was just like walking into Afghanistan,” Luttrell recalls. The realism also impressed another visitor—Mohammad Gulab, the Pashtun tribal leader who refused bribes and threats from the Taliban to save the American. Although a language barrier prevented him from knowing it at the time, Luttrell later learned Gulab acted out of a code of honor called Pashtunwali.

That honor code reminded Luttrell of the bushido he learned as part of martial arts study at age seven, leading him to join the Navy. “I carried all that knowledge I had learned from the Japanese and Okinawans into the SEALs, and I was a better man for it.” Coming to Japan to promote the film gave him the opportunity to see some of the origins and bring his story full circle.

Since writing his bestseller, Luttrell was medically discharged from the Navy and founded the Lone Survivor Foundation to renew hope for wounded soldiers and their families. He welcomes the attention the film has brought his foundation, allowing him to move on while helping other soldiers do the same.

Lone Survivor is now playing.